Moderator

If we fixed the injuries we would be playing finals next week, with the single coach. Instead our players are unavailable, we don't have the depth of talent going deep to replace our spine - which no team does - and we fell short.

Norm Smith Medallist

One to forget. I’ll hang on to the memories of a couple of good wins and trash the rest, it’s been a disaster honestly. Onward and upwards now.

The next 6 months including coach/CEO appointments, trade and draft period and preseason will be the most important the club has ever had I think. Whether we get it right could be the difference between pushing for finals next year or staring down another rebuild.

Norm Smith Medallist

If we fixed the injuries we would be playing finals next week, with the single coach. Instead our players are unavailable, we don't have the depth of talent going deep to replace our spine - which no team does - and we fell short.

Alex Pearce when he is fit is the premier CHB in the league and aside from him stopping an opposition tall, particularly a marking tall, one of the best things he does for the side is allow the rest of the defensive set up to have the confidence in his ability to not lose that contest, particularly the aerial contests. We don't have as much team mate spoiling going on, we have a mark we build off and because the defense was expecting either a spoil or a mark to us our players start working to get dangerous instead of rushing to outnumber the contest.

He's a gun. The more we see of him the more obvious that will become.

Jesse Hogan, well. He is a very talented young man with a long road ahead of him but there is a reason he is a rising star winner and a reason Melbourne gave up pick #3, #14 and #47 for Hogan, Chris Dawes and Dom Barry - to be fair, one of those reasons was that the father son rules at the time allowed you to use your next available pick after a bid and they didn't think a bid would come before their remaining #4 selection in that draft. The talk at the time was that Gold Coast might bid pick #2 on him but that didn't happen as the Suns traded that to get Martin.

Jack Viney was bid on at pick #7 and their next available pick was #26.

Oh for us to have benefited from such generous list concessions... If Melbourne had picked any of the next three players: Jake Stringer, Jack Macrae or Ollie Wines over Jimmy Toupas we might have seen a much different AFL landscape the last six years.

Brownlow Medallist

A mixed year with some strong wins and poor losses heavily derailed by injuries. Overall a clear improvement from last year which is all I wanted and if we can sort out our medical staff and get some talent in the middle we'll be very well placed for finals.

But ducks go quack, cows go moo and AFL fans scream sack the coach halfway through a rebuild which is what happened.

We were finals bound next year. As it stands now, we are up s**t creek - without a boat. Yes, there is now another 4 years of s**t awaiting us.

What the club needed was a fix of the cause, instead they reacted to ease the symptoms, that nasty rash aint going away by continuously rubbing snake oil on it. Our 2012-2015 list went further than it should have and it's too easily forgotten, our current list though is cactus. You can dislike a game plan style etc but Ross could extract more out of his players than most, Ross could get the wins by having the team play harder and smarter than the other team to make up for a lack of raw talent, I doubt our next coach can extract so much from them.

Letting you all know yet again, we rebuilt because at the time, our first round draft picks with Pav retiring were SHill, Bennell (the ole do-er up project that sat in the garage for a year) then nothing down to Apeness, Tucker.

We've turned over most of our list - if SHill get's on the park, it's Fyfe, Walters, SHill, APearce, Blakely, Taberner left of our B22 in 2015/2016. Instead of focusing on quality, we've watered down our picks to try and get quantity of players in, been lucky in being able to "buy" players, but this list has a lot of filler hiding the gaps.

We don't have the talent, we are stuffed. We turned things around and managed to be a bit of a destination club for players which helps for talent, but talents don't like going to cellar dwelling clubs (which we are bound for) and we are going to lose Langdon this year, BHill this year or at the end of his contract. APearce and Hogan, along with SHill are serious perpeptual injuries in the key talents that we have (hmmm... maybe add Tabs to that).

We blamed a list management and S&C problem on the coach, a new coach is not going to change the list issues. The board are a bunch of friggin clueless muppets.

Club Legend

Kinda feel like we wasted the year tbh. We definitely improved and a few guys took a step up (Langdon, APearce, Ryan etc) but we've pretty much learned nothing new re our youth and our depth is worse than ever. Sacking Ross was the right move imo but it's probably going to set us back short-term, especially if we lose Langdon and/or Hill who are both critical to our game. I reckon the horrid skill level is going to be a stumbling block for the new coach as he *hopefully* tries to create a more attacking game-plan. I'd definitely be hring a specialized skills coach.

Thing that does give me hope is that it can all turn very quickly if the new coach can come up with a consistent style and get the players to buy into it.

Premiership Player

If we are doing an autopsy of the year it was way below expectations for mine. You can blame whatever you want - coaches, player development, fitness - but it was a net negative. We were aiming for finals and that was the pass mark.
The board were probably right in their estimation that Lyon should not coach us beyond 2020, but the way they have utterly screwed up the process of replacing him means they have set us up to go backwards not forwards. We are a nothing club at present.

Team Captain

If we are doing an autopsy of the year it was way below expectations for mine. You can blame whatever you want - coaches, player development, fitness - but it was a net negative. We were aiming for finals and that was the pass mark.
The board were probably right in their estimation that Lyon should not coach us beyond 2020, but the way they have utterly screwed up the process of replacing him means they have set us up to go backwards not forwards. We are a nothing club at present.

Brownlow Medallist

If we fixed the injuries we would be playing finals next week, with the single coach. Instead our players are unavailable, we don't have the depth of talent going deep to replace our spine - which no team does - and we fell short.

I see where you're coming from, but if we're willing to cut some slack to other players for the lack of skill that hasn't been COACHED for the past 8 years, why not Ed? He's a running machine, kicks the ball when he's at full tilt, and is bound to burn it at times. But if we get a coach that practices skills, why wouldn't he benefit from that too? You watch, he'll go somewhere where skills are worked on, and he'll turn into an elite winger, probably get an AA at some point in his career. Take it to whatever bank we're supposed to take it to when someone wants to be emphatic with an opinion.

It is impossible to prove our game plan is more prone to creating injury risk to players without running a controlled experiment, and that is not possible without a time machine. But we always seem to have bad luck with injuries every season. Maybe it is not bad luck but something we are doing wrong. Wishing for fewer injuries and saying "oh but without injuries we coulda. been a contender..." I think is avoiding critical thinking about the real problems.

Injuries have been a forever thing. 2011 we nearly had to bring in some ring-ins to cover the record levels of injuries. Taylor's dead right with demonstrating GPS km's as a causal link, it needs more of the observable stuff over feelpinions to qualify for critical thinking.

Team Captain

I see where you're coming from, but if we're willing to cut some slack to other players for the lack of skill that hasn't been COACHED for the past 8 years, why not Ed? He's a running machine, kicks the ball when he's at full tilt, and is bound to burn it at times. But if we get a coach that practices skills, why wouldn't he benefit from that too? You watch, he'll go somewhere where skills are worked on, and he'll turn into an elite winger, probably get an AA at some point in his career. Take it to whatever bank we're supposed to take it to when someone wants to be emphatic with an opinion.

Brownlow Medallist

Injuries have been a forever thing. 2011 we nearly had to bring in some ring-ins to cover the record levels of injuries. Taylor's dead right with demonstrating GPS km's as a causal link, it needs more of the observable stuff over feelpinions to qualify for critical thinking.

Club Legend

It is impossible to prove our game plan is more prone to creating injury risk to players without running a controlled experiment, and that is not possible without a time machine. But we always seem to have bad luck with injuries every season. Maybe it is not bad luck but something we are doing wrong. Wishing for fewer injuries and saying "oh but without injuries we coulda. been a contender..." I think is avoiding critical thinking about the real problems.

The issue is the hypothesis (athletes working too hard) doesn't fit as it's not really based on any previous studies or evidence, as making a team work hard on field is pretty much the point of coaching. Reasons for burn out or injuries more realistically may arise from either 1. fitness levels + age profile and 2. poor injury and recovery management.

Critically thinking about problems is fine but interpreting evidence to fit a preconceived bias (Lyon is a bad coach) is a danger to be cognizant of.

So if I understand what you're implying - the rest of the team does? In a team full of woefully skilled players, why do none of them have the initiative to take responsibility to work on themselves?

None of the others run like he does, except Brad Hill, and anything executed running at fill tilt is going to be under some duress. And the myth perpetuated by the eastern states media that Brad Hill has sublime skills, is well... just that - a myth. Better than Langdon, no doubt, but sublime - naaahh.

They need a specialist skills coach for every line IMO, or at least get in some assistants that know how to do skills drills until each line can actually hit a target, by hand and foot. I believe that with a coach who works on skills, skills and more skills, we'd see a significant improvement in Langdon's disposal. For him, Hill, and a couple of others who will perhaps take turns running the wing, then skills under fatigue situations would improve them even more. That is, of course, just my opinion. And one that shared by many it seems, that our lack of skills is a major issue.

Langdon just seems to be the scapegoat for all the s**tty skills we display, so my question was - if there's some cut slack for all the others, why not him? We will seriously miss his run and carry when he's playing for some Melbourne team next year.

Norm Smith Medallist

I see where you're coming from, but if we're willing to cut some slack to other players for the lack of skill that hasn't been COACHED for the past 8 years, why not Ed? He's a running machine, kicks the ball when he's at full tilt, and is bound to burn it at times. But if we get a coach that practices skills, why wouldn't he benefit from that too? You watch, he'll go somewhere where skills are worked on, and he'll turn into an elite winger, probably get an AA at some point in his career. Take it to whatever bank we're supposed to take it to when someone wants to be emphatic with an opinion.

When fit our preferred distributors out the backline are Wilson, SHill and Ryan. It's their role to use the ball well and help us move the ball forward in an aggressive fashion. All three are injured so at the moment it's the lesser lights that are doing the distributing out of the back line. (Duman, Nyhuis, Logue, Hughes, etc.) Yes it would be great if they were better (we need our depth to be better if we want to move up the ladder). However they're the second string options and I'm not going to be as harsh on them as I am on the first string players.

- Ed Langdon is a first string player. He is our first choice midfielder to play on the opposite wing to BHill.
- When our team is fit we clearly try to get the ball to our designated distributors. SHill, Wilson, Ryan, BHill, Langdon, Walters, Mundy. (spot the odd one out)
- 71% of Ed Langdon's possessions were uncontested. Our mids were doing their part and feeding him the ball.
- Out of all our Best22 distributors, he is by far the worst. We may have depth players equally as bad, but that is why they are depth.
- Earlier in the year he was the 3rd worst kick i50 in the entire competition. 9 out of 10 times that he kicks inside 50 we do not retain the ball. Link
- A turnover from an outside midfielder is so much harder to defend, when an inside mid hack kicks it forward out of a pack the team know it's a 50/50 chance it's coming back. The defenders stay sharp and close to their opposite men. When an outside mid gets the ball in the clear the whole team streams forward assuming we are going to maintain position. Everyone is out of position when they turn it over. It hurts a lot more than it just being a missed scoring opportunity. How often have we seen it rebound straight back.
- His disposal efficiency looks good because he kicks the ball long and high (DPearce like). Very rarely is he able to spot up a target and kick to their advantage. He does not possess the skill to do so. Ed himself said this in an interview mid year. He is all about run and effort, not silky skills. (I'm trying to find this interview if anyone remembers it).

We keep talking about our lack of skills, our focus on effort over skill. I've never questioned Ed's effort, he always gives 110%. To me Ed Langdon is the personification of Ross Lyon 'Effort' ball. If we want to move forward we should be looking to offload him.

Also you mentioned him kicking at full tilt. How has he not learnt after 4-5 seasons to slow down a fraction before kicking.